Overview

• Cha 1107-7626, about 620 light-years away in Chamaeleon, is currently accreting roughly 6.6 billion tonnes of gas and dust per second.
• Researchers measured an approximately eightfold rise in the accretion rate within months compared with prior observations.
• The team reports in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that JWST spectra and VLT data captured and quantified the ongoing outburst.
• The object is estimated to be 1–2 million years old and is proposed to have formed by direct cloud collapse rather than ejection from a stellar system.
• A similar high-accretion episode in 2016 suggests episodic bursts, with follow-up observations planned to determine their duration and recurrence.